Eckhart Tolle was born Ullrich Tolle in Lünen, Germany, in 1948. According to New York Times writer Jesse McKinley, Ullrich changed his name to Eckhart after he began his spiritual teaching, in imitation of the 13th-century German theologian Meister Eckhart. As McKinley points out, the details of Tolle’s “personal history are murky,” although it is certain that he attended the universities of London, Cambridge, and British Columbia. (McKinley, Jesse. “The Wisdom of the Ages, for Now Anyway.” The New York Times, 23 Mar. 2008.)

Given Tolle’s repeated affirmation that becoming identified with one’s personal history is a destructive function of the ego, his lack of concrete biography is arguably intentional. Indeed, in the introduction to The Power of Now, Tolle states, “I have little use for the past and rarely think about it” (Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. New World Library, 2010.)

In A New Earth: Create a Better Life, Tolle only refers to episodes from his life in so far as they can act as parables. However, the past episode he most refers to is his crisis of consciousness at age 29. In his twenties an intellectually minded Tolle alternated between states of extreme anxiety and near-suicidal depression.